Blog With Pizazz

Have you ever found a blog on a subject that interests you only to find that you fall asleep while trying to read it?

Blogs are not scholarly essays. They are not reports. They are not white papers. They do convey information but if you want avid readers, convey that information in an entertaining, conversational way. Let your readers get to know you by having a conversation with them. Ask questions - also a good way to get comments. Before you start to write, get a mental picture of your reader. Talk TO him, not at him.

Read your post out loud - yes - out loud. If you read it to yourself, your brain will compensate for little errors. Reading out loud allows you to find phrases that make you stumble or hesitate. Notice where your commas are. Is it a natural place to pause? If a comma makes you pause where you shouldn't, remove it. If you find a spot that's confusing, but a comma would make it clear, add one. The absolute rules of grammar and punctuation do not apply here. Readability and 'understandability' are what's important. Write like you talk, not like you write!

A word about spelling - it must be perfect. Don't rely on a spell checker because it won't find misused words like there for their or your for you're and on and on. Reading out loud will help with this too, but to spot those pesky typos, read your copy backwards. That makes you read word for word and those typos should stick out so you can fix them.

SEO is important but give some thought to incorporating your keywords in an engaging way. Your keywords should suggest good sentences. If they do not, do some more keyword research

Make your blog interactive. Interactive? Yes - if your reader has something to do he will be more likely to stay this time AND come back later. Put up a survey or a poll. Make him know that you value his opinion.

Don't forget to ask him to sign up for your feed or newsletter. If you want him to do something, you must tell him what you want him to do.

Pay attention but keep it light. Make your blog sparkle and your readers will take a shine to you!

For more tips and tricks on WordPress and blogging please visit http://www.thewordpresswizard.com While you are there sign up for the The Wizard Weekly, a free weekly teleseminar on everything WordPress and blogging.

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Blog Marketing From Online Marketing Company

As a business that regularly works in the online marketplace, you intrinsically understand that there are many challenges facing your ability to grow and thrive. How will you draw new customers to your website? How can you improve your profits? How can you become more widely known? For many organizations, the answer is related to search engine performance: the vast majority of online users rely on major search engines to uncover information - and if your company doesn't appear near the top of those search engine lists, you may well be out of luck when it comes to drawing in new visitors and potential customers.

One of the smartest things you can do as an online business, then, is to work with an experienced online marketing company. Why? Simple: online marketing companies understand the specific challenges that are inherent in making your business's web presence stand out. The right online marketing company has the necessary experience to optimize your company's website so that it is closely linked to likely search terms and is organized in a way that is welcoming to visitors. A good online marketing company can help you build website content, develop website design, and develop a strategy for increasing and improving your overall web presence. The differences between a standard company's website and one that has worked with an online marketing company are clear: one will always be more usable and well developed than the other.

One way that an experienced online marketing company can help to grow your business is by assisting you in developing effective blog marketing. What is blog marketing? As a general rule, blog marketing is the use of short, current, reader-friendly articles that boost your website's level of content and broaden your website's reach.

Maintaining an active blog on your website means that you will have content that is consistently updated and current (through the use of daily or weekly postings), ensuring that your website is filled with up-to-date articles that are immediate and accessible. Furthermore, regular blog postings can be sprinkled with the kinds of keywords and key phrases that will make your website's content stand out - and links to and from your website embedded in regular blog postings will increase the usability of your website tremendously. Additionally, the conversational tone and reader-friendly demeanor of blogs help to make your website welcoming and accessible. Websites that employ blog marketing, then, enjoy increased readership, are more linkable, and generally provide a better public face for your web-based business

At the end of the day, what truly makes your web-based business tick is exposure - and having the right online marketing company assist you with development, design, and blog marketing can be exponentially helpful in getting you to where you want to be.

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Should I Start a Blog For My Small Business?

Can a small business really benefit from a blog? You bet your sweet can-can it can.

OK, so that's too many cans for one article. Bottom line. You CAN run a small business blog and make it profitable. Here are a few tips on how:

• First, don't try to swallow the whole apple in one bite. Take it slow. You may not need a daily blog. Start with a weekly blog and move up from there as you need to.
• Secondly, make a list of keywords before you do anything. Then, focus each blog entry on a single keyword. Write 150-200 words on that keyword and link back to your main web site.
• Thirdly, don't promote your competitors. Promote yourself. No-brainer? You would think, but I see small businesses promoting their competition all the time.
• Fourthly, speak to your audience, not at them. Invite them to participate. Sponsor contests or encourage comments and interaction. That's really what blogs are for.

Blogging is nothing new. It's been around awhile. But it is relatively new for business. Some corporate blogs have been quite successful, but not too many small businesses are taking advantage of this free promotional tool. They should.

A blog on your small business web site gives you fresh new content every time you post a blog. That's very important for search engine saturation. Also, every link from your blog to your web site is counted as a link by Yahoo! and MSN. Google is a little more strict, but that may not be important.

For one thing, Google is largely the search engine for corporate players and techies. The statistics that show Google's market share are a bit skewed; that's the big secret.

People who live on the web use Google. They make dozens of searches every day. Most people only make one or two searches a day. AOL users use AOL. Most new users of the Internet are using Yahoo, MSN or AOL. If you run a retail business, those search engines are more important to you than Google, so it's important that you understand how your blog is being read by them.

Your local business can benefit from a company blog if you understand your customer and address each blog to meet their needs. Key things to remember:

• Blogging takes time. If you don't have it, don't start one. At least, don't do it every day. Once a week or twice a week is OK. But keep a consistent schedule.
• Use a software that allows you to timestamp entries. You can write several at one time and set them to post at an appointed time.
• If you can't do it yourself, hire someone to do it. You can get a blog ghostwriter for as little as $5 per post.
• Make it keyword focused, for the search engines.

Above all, have fun.

Allen Taylor is manages over 50 business blogs and runs a small business Internet marketing company in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Learn more about small business Internet marketing at http://taylor-and-associates.com

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Is Technorati Worth It?

I know a lot of bloggers around the world seem to think technorati is one of the top or if not the top blogging tool for exposure, but to me it seems like a mostly one sided affair.

Technorati get much more out of your service than you do out of theirs, for example if you use their in-text keyword or linking service - How exactly does this benefit you? To my knowledge few people use technorati as a search engine to actually find blogs or content. It now seems to be dominated by webmasters rather than users. Its rather the case that people are referred TO technorati from people who use their tools and then those people find other blogs than people going to technorati first hand to find content and blogs.

It could be more of a traffic losing tool than a traffic promoter. Sure you will be listed on their database and keywords will be stored - Wow! thats it? The probability that you will get traffic from them is very low. The probability that you will send them traffic is very high (especially if you use keywording).

As for SEO I doubt technorati adds anything to your sites popularity, indexing returns nothing on google and other top search engines.

So why do people continue to use what seems like a one way service. Im afraid the name factor is in effect once again. Similar to other social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, simpy, flurl etc, submitting to these sites is not likely to bring you any traffic and do very little for your websites popularity. The fact is you are doing more for them than they are doing for you. Digg is the exception where their indexing system seems to be much better for search engines and this could do some good, or over-exposure, bad, for your sites popularity.

So why do people continue to submit to these sites? Because everybody else does, it seems. What I like to call a web trend myth, where a service is so hyped and well known (hence the name factor) that bloggers and webmasters think that the service must do something good for their website whereas in reality webmasters and bloggers are doing more for the myth sites.

Jimmy McGrath of Affiliate Programs Cash has been an Internet marketer / advertiser for the last 5 years, working for various companies and now freelance. In the last year he has been researching the advertising and marketing strategies of internet entrepreneurs. He is also a cross-culture educational expert and has lectured at several universities across Canada and the USA.

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